Days of 'tootin and shootin' are almost here

Recent cold weather and rain portend good times ahead — duck hunting. What a nice thought. Tootin and shootin.

The season opens this Saturday in the east zone — the region generally Bossier City east and south to Morgan City, including all of northeastern Louisiana. For specific information on bag limits and other legalities check the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries website.

Prospects look good nationwide, from the productivity report from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Aerial flights in the prairie pothole region in the upper U.S. Midwest and Canada reveled another good hatch last summer. Overall the survey estimated 49 million ducks, which is 8 percent above last years' estimate and 43 percent above the long-term average, collected from 1955 to 2013.

Due to the average to above average rainfall in the prairie Canada and the U.S. the pond count looked good. These are used as production areas, and the numbers were about the same as last year, and higher than the long term average. Things looked good.

I'll detail some of the data from the surveys of the commonly hunted dabbling duck species around northeastern Louisiana.

Species Estimated abundance (millions) percent relative to long term average:

Mallard 10.9 +42 percent

Gadwall 3.8 +102 percent

American widgeon 3.1 +20 percent

Green-winged teal 3.4 +69 percent

Blue-winged teal 8.5 +75 percent

Northern shoveler 5.3 +114

Northern pintail 3.2 -20 percent

The pintail is the only one of these species that's lower this year than the long term average.

For some of the diving ducks that aren't hunted as much around here, red head and canvasbacks estimates were up from the long term mean, and scaup were similar to their long term figure.

But Louisiana may be a somewhat different story. Larry Reynolds, Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries, Waterfowl Leader, shared with me data from midwinter surveys in our flyway. Over the last 15 years or so a lower proportion of ducks wintered in Louisiana.

For all ducks the drop was from 60 percent to about 50 percent. For mallards which forage on land more than other ducks the drop was from 29 percent to about 10 percent.

So is this a short term aberration or a real trend? And why? Are shifts in land use, suitable habitat, duck behavior, or even what everything in the world blamed for, climate change, involved? I don't know the answers. But overall the latest numbers look good.

We should have plenty of ducks. And Cadi, John, and I are looking forward to testing the water. A day of tootin and shootin sounds like fun.